Disclaimer: We all know that the vast majority of police are good eggs... but more and more with everyone having camera in cell phones and the internet we get more stories if the bad ones.

The biggest problem I have with this is not that there are BAD APPLES in the bunch... but the fact that the good ones are not outraged and DO SOMETHING about it.

Most of the time these BAD COPS don't even get jail time, even when convicted.

So this thread and the parallel discussion thread will be here to document the BAD COPS and hopefully send a message to those that really do serve and protect will start to do something to clean up their own house. Hard to trust like the good old days when there was a friendly cop on every street walking the beat

The other problem is we don't always get all the details... and worse, its hard to find out the followup as most of the time it gets buried

So lets start with this one...

Source: This one makes the rounds via facebook and emails but usually only the image. Disturbing to be sure but never the facts...

Rhode Island police officer Edward Krawetz received no jail time for this brutal assault on this seated and handcuffed woman. Now he wants his job back, share if you don't want this to happen.

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The image shown above stems from a May 2009 incident at the Twin River Casino in Lincoln, Rhode Island, during which Lincoln police officer Edward Krawetz was captured on video kicking Donna Levesque in the head as she sat handcuffed on the curb outside the casino after being removed from the premises for disorderly behavior.

Krawetz was suspended without pay and subsequently tried for assault with a dangerous weapon in connection with the incident; he was convicted in March 2012, after which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison (with all 10 years of the sentence being suspended) and ordered to attend mental health counseling:

A three-day administrative hearing began in June 2012 to determine whether Officer Krawetz should be allowed to keep his position with the Lincoln police force:

Convicted Lincoln Police Officer Edward Krawetz was a no-show on the first day of an administrative hearing to determine if he can continue to wear a badge.

The 12-year veteran of the force is fighting to keep his job after he was convicted of felony assault in March. The case is best known for video from a security camera at Twin River in Lincoln showing Krawetz kicking a handcuffed woman to the head.

Under the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights, a three-member panel of police officers will decide his professional fate after what is expected to be three days of hearings.

Attorney Vincent Ragosta represents the town of Lincoln for the hearing. He declined to go into details about what happened behind closed doors but said Krawetz faces six administrative counts.

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"The final charge is conviction of a felony involving conduct which amounts to moral turpitude or which shocks the conscience of a reasonable person," Ragosta said.

A Twin River surveillance camera recorded Krawetz kicking Donna Levesque, who was sitting on a curb near the officer at the time. Levesque was told to leave the slot parlor for unruly behavior right before the May 31, 2009 kick to the head.

Ragosta said they have requested Levesque to testify at the Bill of Rights hearing but that have not gotten response yet from her.

Krawetz was also convicted of misdemeanor assault in 2001 after an off-duty confrontation with a man who was jogging in Cumberland. He was suspended from the police force for 30 days following that conviction, and town officials recommended to the police chief at the time that Krawetz should be fired.

Krawetz has been suspended without pay but still receives health benefits and "other benefits" according to Ragosta.

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The hearing was scheduled to resume and consider testimony on 21 August 2012, but Officer Krawetz resigned from the force a week prior to that. In a 15 August 2012 news release issued by Town Administrator T. Joseph Almond's office, the town announced it had "accepted an unconditional and irrevocable resignation from Officer Edward Krawetz."

A judge responded to an assault victim by demanding sex in exchange for 'legal favors.' She filed a complaint, and he sent cops to plant meth in her car.

Photo Credit: shutterstock.com

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June 11, 2013

With a plot out of a Hollywood movie or a gripping Lifetime TV show, a mesmerizing drama of sex, power, frame-ups, planted drugs, and lies unfolded in real life in Georgia when two Murray County sheriff's deputies recently pleaded guilty in federal court for their part in a scheme to send an innocent woman to prison. Now both deputies await sentencing on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury stemming from an FBI civil rights investigation into the odd goings-on Down South.

The woman in question, Angela Garmley, had filed a complaint with the Georgia Judicial Qualification Committee alleging that Chief Magistrate Judge Bryant Cochran solicited sex from her in return for legal favors. Shortly after Garmley filed her complaint, she was arrested on August 14, 2012 in sleepy Chatsworth, Georgia, and charged with possession of methamphetamines.

"My client was set up and framed with methamphetamine drugs by Judge Bryant Cochran, whom she had accused of soliciting her for sex in exchange for legal favors in a case she had in Cochran's court," attorney McCracken Poston told the Chronicle.

Pennsylvania Judge Sentenced For 28 Years For Selling Kids to the Prison System

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Mark Ciavarella Jr, a 61-year old former judge in Pennsylvania, has been sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison for literally selling young juveniles for cash. He was convicted of accepting money in exchange for incarcerating thousands of adults and children into a prison facility owned by a developer who was paying him under the table. The kickbacks amounted to more than $1 million.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has overturned some 4,000 convictions issued by him between 2003 and 2008, claiming he violated the constitutional rights of the juveniles – including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea. Some of the juveniles he sentenced were as young as 10-years old.

Ciavarella was convicted of 12 counts, including racketeering, money laundering, mail fraud and tax evasion. He was also ordered to repay $1.2 million in restitution.

His "kids for cash" program has revealed that corruption is indeed within the prison system, mostly driven by the growth in private prisons seeking profits by any means necessary.

The story is an aftermath when a town was evacuated for a flood... I will find the original and link it too. Now the RCMP have always had the rep of one of the best Police forces on the planet but now this...

The RCMP just like Nazi Germany

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Residents angry as RCMP sieze guns from High River homes

HIGH RIVER — RCMP revealed Thursday that officers have seized a “substantial amount” of firearms from homes in the evacuated town of High River.

“We just want to make sure that all of those things are in a spot that we control, simply because of what they are,” said Sgt. Brian Topham.

“People have a significant amount of money invested in firearms … so we put them in a place that we control and that they’re safe.”

That news didn’t sit well with a crowd of frustrated residents who had planned to breach a police checkpoint northwest of the town as an evacuation order stretched into its eighth day.

“I find that absolutely incredible that they have the right to go into a person’s belongings out of their home,” said resident Brenda Lackey, after learning Mounties have been taking residents’ guns. “When people find out about this there’s going to be untold hell to pay.”

About 30 RCMP officers set up a blockade at the checkpoint, preventing 50 residents from walking into the town. Dozens more police cars, lights on, could be seen lining streets in the town on standby.

Officers laid down a spike belt to stop anyone from attempting to drive past the blockade. That action sent the crowd of residents into a rage.“What’s next? Tear gas?” shouted one resident.

“It’s just like Nazi Germany, just taking orders,” shouted another.

“This is the reason the U.S. has the right to bear arms,” said Charles Timpano, pointing to the group of Mounties.

Officers were ordered to fall back about an hour into the standoff in order to diffuse the situation and listen to residents’ concerns.

“We don’t want our town to turn into another New Orleans,” said resident Jeff Langford. “The longer that the water stays in our houses the worse it’s going to be. We’ll either be bulldozing them or burning them down because we’ve got an incompetent government.”

Langford blasted High River Mayor Emile Blokland over comments made Wednesday in which Blokland said residents will be allowed to return after businesses, such as hardware and drug stores, are opened.

“It was ridiculous,” said Langford. “I think he’s a puppet on a string.”

Langford said Premier Redford should come to High River to address residents’ concerns and provide information.

“This is at the highest tension,” he said. “What’s going to happen next is that people are just going to be walking across these fields, and I don’t care if they put hundreds of thousand of police officers there, they’re not going to stop from getting in.”

Sgt. Topham said he didn’t know when residents would be allowed to return to their homes. “People much higher up are going to make those decisions,” he said.

He did confirm that officer relied on forced entry to get into numerous houses during the early stages of the flood because of an “urgent need”, said Topham.

Police are no longer forcing themselves into homes and the residences that were forced open will be secured, he said.

Topham said the confiscated firearms have been inventoried and are secured at an RCMP detachment. He was not at liberty to say how many firearms had been confiscated.

“We have seized a large quantity of firearms simply because they were left by residents in their places,” said Topham.

The guns will be returned to owners after residents are allowed back in town and they provide proof of ownership, Topham added.

Residents promised to returned to the checkpoint at noon every day until they are allowed to return to their homes.

The Texas Department of Public Safety has closed a lawsuit involving two Texas women who claimed to be violated during a roadside search last July.

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The two women are Angela and Ashley Dobbs. They were pulled over for throwing cigarette butts out of their car window during a trip to Oklahoma last year. State Trooper David Farrell claimed he smelled marijuana in the car and decided to do a search. He found nothing.

Despite finding nothing, Farrell decided the women needed to be searched as well, and he called female Trooper Kelly Helleson to do the search. Here is where the problems began.

Rather than sticking to a standard pat down search, Helleson searched, quite literally, every cavity of the women’s bodies. She put on a pair of latex gloves and used her fingers to search the anuses and vaginas of both women. Helleson even used the same pair of gloves for both women.

Helleson’s searches turned up nothing, but the women were not about to forget what was done to them. They contacted attorney Scott Palmer and filed a lawsuit. The women won their lawsuit and were awarded $185,000.

“I think DPS came to the table, they did the right thing,” Palmer said. “They recognized this was a bad case that needed to go away.”

Helleson was fired and charged with two counts of sexual assault and two counts of official oppression. If she is convicted of the charges, she will need to register as a sex offender. Farrell is not off the hook either. He is currently suspended while investigators determine if he stole a bottle of hydrocodone from the women during the search.

Palmer and both women hope the ruling is stern enough to prevent officers from violating citizens during searches in the future.

“I don't think anybody needs to have to feel, or go through what we went through," Ashley Dobbs said. "It crosses my mind every day. It's humiliating.”

The Alcoholic Beverage Control said Friday it’s reviewing the incident. A spokeswoman said a female agent saw “what appeared to be an underage person in possession of what appeared to be a case of beer.”

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It should have been just a simple trip to the grocery store to buy bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream for a sorority event.

Instead, six plainclothes officers swarmed University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly, who was ultimately arrested and spent the night and next afternoon in jail, the Charlottesville Daily Progress reported.

What happened? The officers — men and a woman — were state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents who suspected the 20-year-old walking to her car that night had just bought a pack of beer. One agent jumped on the hood of her SUV and Daly said one drew a gun. Panicking and not knowing who they were, she tried to get away.

“They were showing unidentifiable badges after they approached us, but we became frightened, as they were not in anything close to a uniform,” Daly said in a written account of the April 11 incident.

“I couldn’t put my windows down unless I started my car, and when I started my car they began yelling to not move the car, not to start the car. They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were…terrified,” she stated.

She dialed 911 as she pulled out of the parking lot and stopped for an agent’s car with lights and sirens, the Daily Progress reported. Once she realized who the agents were, she apologized profusely.

Nevertheless, Daly was charged with two felony counts of assaulting a law enforcement officer after she grazed two agents with her SUV trying to flee, and one felony count of eluding police.

She spent the night and afternoon in jail, and was facing prison time and thousands of dollars in fines before the charges were dropped Thursday.

Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman told the Daily Progress he’d never seen a case like this in 34 years of experience.

“It wouldn’t be the right thing to do to prosecute this,” he said.

The Alcoholic Beverage Control said Friday it’s reviewing the incident. A spokeswoman said a female agent saw “what appeared to be an underage person in possession of what appeared to be a case of beer.”

“The agent identified herself as a police officer and was displaying her badge,” agency spokeswoman Kathleen Shaw said in a statement. “The agents were acting upon reasonable suspicion.”

THIRD AMENDMENT VIOLATED? NEV. POLICE ALLEGEDLY INVADE FAMILY’S HOME TO USE DURING SWAT CALL, ARREST TWO FOR ‘OBSTRUCTION’ WHEN OWNER REFUSES

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Jul. 8, 2013 11:52am Becket Adams

Remember the Third Amendment?

You know, the part of the U.S. Constitution that goes like this: “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

Well, a Henderson, Nev., family in a recent lawsuit claims that their Third Amendment rights were violated on July 10, 2011, when police officers commandeered their homes and arrested two family members for “obstruction.”

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“Henderson police arrested a family for refusing to let officers use their homes as lookouts for a domestic violence investigation of their neighbors,” Reason explains.

The Las Vegas Review Journal provides details on the domestic violence situation police officers were dealing with on that blistering summer day:

Police had gone to the 300 block of Evening Side Avenue, near Horizon Ridge Parkway and the Las Vegas Beltway, for an alleged domestic violence incident at Phillip White Jr.’s home…

White was believed to have barricaded himself and a child inside his home at 363 Evening Side.

SWAT officers closed all entrances and exits to the neighborhood. The standoff lasted hours.

Police began to call people in their homes.

When officers called on Anthony Mitchell and asked if they could “occupy his home in order to gain a ‘tactical advantage’ against the occupant of the neighboring house,” he declined, saying he didn’t want to get involved.

Things turned ugly — fast.

“The officers banged forcefully on the door and loudly commanded Anthony Mitchell to open the door to his residence,” the official complaint reads. “Surprised and perturbed, plaintiff Anthony Mitchell immediately called his mother (plaintiff Linda Mitchell) on the phone, exclaiming to her that the police were beating on his front door.”

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“Seconds later, officers…smashed open plaintiff Anthony Mitchell’s front door with a metal ram as plaintiff stood in his living room,” it continues. ”As plaintiff Anthony Mitchell stood in shock, the officers aimed their weapons at Anthony Mitchell and shouted obscenities at him and ordered him to lie down on the floor.”

Amazingly enough, the complaint gets worse:

Fearing for his life, plaintiff Anthony Mitchell dropped his phone and prostrated himself onto the floor of his living room, covering his face and hands.

Addressing plaintiff as “asshole”, officers, including Officer Snyder, shouted conflicting orders at Anthony Mitchell, commanding him to both shut off his phone, which was on the floor in front of his head, and simultaneously commanding him to “crawl” toward the officers.

Confused and terrified, plaintiff Anthony Mitchell remained curled on the floor of his living room, with his hands over his face, and made no movement.

Although plaintiff Anthony Mitchell was lying motionless on the ground and posed no threat, officers, including Officer David Cawthorn, then fired multiple “pepperball” rounds at plaintiff as he lay defenseless on the floor of his living room. Anthony Mitchell was struck at least three times by shots fired from close range, injuring him and causing him severe pain.

Police officers supposedly discharged a few pepperball rounds in the direction of Mitchell’s dog before allegedly locking the family pet outside for hours in the Nevada heat.

Getty Images

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Anthony’s parents’ luck with the police wasn’t any better.

“Mitchell’s parents, Michael and Linda Mitchell, live in the same neighborhood and say they experienced a similar situation,” the Huffington Post reports.

“Michael says he went willingly with officers to the command center on the premise of making a phone call to the domestic violence suspect, but when he tried to leave, he was arrested. Meanwhile, Linda Mitchell says officers physically forced her from the home,” the report adds.

The complaint adds that law enforcement officials occupied both homes and “rummaged through the Mitchells’ belongings, including opening cabinets and using a water dispenser.”

Anthony, like Michael, was also arrested by Henderson police on charges of “obstructing an officer” and was forced to spend nine hours in jail.

The family’s claim that their Third Amendment rights were violated is a bit of a rarity in U.S. courts.

But Frank Cofer, the family’s lawyer, argues that the police had plenty of time to obtain the appropriate warrants. Remember, the standoff with White was an hours-long affair.

Cofer continued, noting that the family’s case hinges on the definition of “soldier.”

Do Henderson police officers technically count as “soldiers”? And can one say that they were “quartered” in the homes of the Mitchells?

“The lawyer said that police forces throughout the country, including local law enforcement, are employing military weapons and tactics and the facts of the Mitchells’ case shows the spirit of the Third Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was violated,” the Las Vegas Review-Journal notes.

“Brazil.” (movie screen grab)“Ultimately, we want the case to go to a jury. That’s the type of vindication the Mitchell family wants,” Cofer said. “We definitely intend to see that the Mitchell family gets justice for the pain and humiliation they suffered.”

The Henderson police department, for its part, has declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying instead that it “doesn’t comment on pending lawsuits.”

COMMENT BY --- BLUEDOG78Jul. 8, 2013 at 2:54pmBeing a cop I usually stick up for them because I know working on the streets not everything is black and white like people want it to be. However in this case I can’t defend the police actions. As an officer you have it drilled into you what exigencies allow you to enter a home without a warrant, and I don’t see any of those exigencies in this situation. Hope they win the lawsuit, 3rd amendment thing might be a stretch, but certainly a 4th amendment issue.

When San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Deputy Darren Murphy responded to a "shots fired" call in April 2008, he decided en route that he was going to make an arrest.Those recordings provide a rare, frighteningly revealing, behind-the-scenes perspective of how one local law enforcement agency views the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and other laws its personnel are sworn to uphold. Sheriff's spinner Rob Bryn declined to confirm the identities of any of the deputies appearing or heard in the recordings.

Last month’s arrest of a chemist, who worked in a Massachusetts Department of Public Health state laboratory, for allegedly falsifying evidence used in criminal cases is prompting calls for major forensic science reform in the US.Over her nine year career at the William A Hinton State Lab in Jamaica Plain the defendant, Annie Dookhan, tested about 60,000 samples involved in roughly 34,000 criminal cases. More than 1140 defendants have been incarcerated as a result of Dookhan’s work and those cases are now in doubt, says Terrel Harris, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security.

Dookhan analysed drug evidence submitted by Massachusetts law enforcement and, at times, she testified about her findings in court. Authorities allege that she tested samples from a Suffolk County narcotics case in March 2011 and signed two certificates confirming that they were cocaine, but recent testing by the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory determined that they weren’t illegal narcotics.

According to investigators, Dookhan examined a drug sample from another case a few months later and determined it to be cocaine, but subsequent mass spectrometry testing disputed that finding. She is also accused of faking a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

‘Dire implications’‘The scandal has forced officials to revisit all of these criminal cases to search for defendants who might have been wronged,’ Harris tells Chemistry World. The governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, has established an office specifically to review criminal cases potentially affected by Dookhan’s failures. Thus far, more than 20 defendants have reportedly been released as a result of the questions raised about her work.

‘The implications are dire,’ says Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney. ‘A large number of drug cases, often involving high-level offenders who use guns, have had their convictions called into question.’

The Dookhan scandal has also led to the closure of the Hinton lab’s food and drug unit where she worked. In addition, it prompted last month’s resignation of John Auerbach, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, who oversaw that lab.

‘There was insufficient quality monitoring, reporting and investigating on the part of supervisors and managers surrounding the former Department of Public Health drug lab in Jamaica Plain – and ultimately, as commissioner, the buck stops with me,’ Auerbach stated. He called Dookhan’s behaviour, and the failure to properly manage and supervise her work, ‘unacceptable’.

Red flags ignoredIn fact, red flags were raised about Dookhan’s work, but were ignored. Police records show that colleagues and scientific experts had warned that her productivity was too high to be believable. An average chemist at the lab analysed 50 to 150 samples per month and her rate was estimated at over 500.

‘This is probably the worst case we have seen of this kind of thing, but it is not the first lab that has raised these kinds of questions,’ says Josh Lee, a criminal defense attorney who teaches forensic chromatography for the American Chemical Society and Axion Analytical Laboratories in Chicago. He says it comes down to oversight, quality assurance and transparency.

‘Forensic science is very much a “wild, wild west” where everyone does what they want,’ Lee says, noting that the scientists are usually supervised by police officers. ‘You have a system where, unfortunately, you are being graded in how much throughput you can get and how fast you are at your job and that is very dangerous in this line of work.’

Scientific and legal experts are demanding more transparency and accountability in forensics and they suggest that cameras should be installed in crime labs, as well putting in place barcoded sample tracking systems. Many are also urging that such facilities be made wholly independent, with no police or district attorney oversight. In addition, they advise implementation of independent auditing and random checking of actual samples by an independent quality assurance (QA) officer.

‘If you’re working in a lab, you shouldn’t have to worry if an officer or sergeant will be mad if you don’t give them the results that they want,’ Lee tells Chemistry World. ‘It always starts small when someone begins cutting corners or skipping steps and it grows until you end up with a scandal like this.’

Dookhan’s behaviour was enabled by a faulty system, observers suggest. They note that her errors span nine years – 2003 to 2012 – so there didn’t appear to be any effective QA personnel at her lab. Training deficiencies and ineffective oversight by supervisors are also being noted.

Many suggest that the fiasco is a laboratory-wide or system-wide failure and they warn that removing Dookhan won’t fix the problem.

More than 300 convicted inmates have been released from Massachusetts state prisons in the US as a result of the September 2012 arrest and subsequent prosecution of Annie Dookhan, who worked in a Department of Public Health state laboratory and allegedly falsified evidence used in criminal cases. Now the scandal has grown with the prosecution of another Massachusetts state lab chemist for tampering with evidence and stealing drugs seized as evidence.

Sonja Farak, who worked at the Massachusetts State Crime Laboratory in Amherst, was charged with tampering with four drug samples stored at the lab on 1 April. In two of the cases, authorities allege that Farak mixed drug evidence samples with counterfeit drugs to hide her theft, and in the two other cases the samples could not be found. She was also charged with cocaine possession.

Attorney general Martha Coakley said that Farak – who was originally arrested in January, just months after the Dookhan scandal broke – ‘violated the trust placed in her’.